The film, due in the UK on July 22 2016, will be produced by Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment company alongside Dreamworks Studios, and will be distributed by eOne Films. The BFG will also reunite Spielberg with screenplay writer Melissa Mathison, who wrote the screenplay for E.T: the Extra-Terrestrial.

Dahl’s story concerns a girl named Sophie, famously named after his granddaughter, who sees a benevolent giant one night when she cannot sleep. The pair become friends and work together to stop the rest of the evil giants from eating any more ‘human beans’.

“It is fitting that the UK is the first international country to announce the date of The BFG, a story that sprang from the imagination of this proud son from Wales,” Spielberg said. “We at DreamWorks Studios hope our film will add to Roald Dahl’s prolific legacy of entertainment.” The director's last family film, The Adventures of Tintin, was released in 2011. Melissa Mathison, who wrote the script for Spielberg's ET: The Extraterrestrial, is adapting the book.

2016 also marks the 100th anniversary of Roald Dahl’s birth. His books remain popular sources for adaptation, with recent years seeing a successful musical based on Matilda, a stop-motion Wes Anderson take on Fantastic Mr Fox and an upcoming TV adaptation of Esio Trot starring Dustin Hoffman and Judi Dench due later in 2014.

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Alex Hamilton, Managing Director of eOne Films UK, says: “The world’s number one storyteller in books, the world’s number one storyteller in film, come together in the centenary year of Roald Dahl’s birth for the film of the summer. The BFG has caught our golden phizzwizard and is set to deliver it into the hearts and minds of everyone in the UK in 2016. This will be a GIANT film in every sense of the word.”